At the nascent stages of a revolution that will touch every aspect of life, many of the first companies using this powerful technology are Israeli.
You cannot search the news online these days without being inundated by the hype around generative AI and specifically ChatGPT by OpenAI of San Francisco.
In fact, the points used for this piece were crafted by prompts using ChatGPT, though all the writing was done by a human being – I promise!
ChatGPT defines generative AI as “a subfield of artificial intelligence (AI) that focuses on the creation of new and original content, such as images, videos, music, and text. It involves the use of machine learning algorithms, such as neural networks, to generate new data that is similar to or inspired by existing data.
“The goal of generative AI is to create content that is unique and unpredictable, but also coherent and meaningful. By learning patterns and structures in existing data, generative AI can create new examples that are similar but not identical.”
Gen AI in the Startup Nation
We are still at the nascent stages of this revolution that will touch every aspect of our lives, but many of the first companies empowering professionals and creators to utilize this powerful technology are coming from the Startup Nation.
As a growing vertical in the Israeli ecosystem, generative AI startups excel because of well-known factors such as army service and an entrepreneurial ethos, along with excellent technical skills and the role larger and legacy tech companies play in the ecosystem.
“It’s the ability to see how revolutionizing Gen AI is. While the existing capabilities are already groundbreaking, the models and performance will get even better in no time,” says Raz Bachar, Microsoft for Startups managing director of Israel and global industry lead.
“For B2B startups, entrepreneurs should figure out how they can enable end customers to harness these capabilities to create a competitive advantage. There are great opportunities to add a layer that can create a unique value proposition,” Bachar adds.
Funds pouring in
From an investor’s perspective, despite a challenging fundraising environment, venture capital is still pouring into Gen AI companies.
ā“We expect that generative AI will be productivity enhancing for many industries, rather than outright replacing jobs,” says Ibex Investors Partner Ryan Mahon.
“Though given the demographic situation around the world, we need more automation simply to replace the flat to shrinking labor force in many developed countries.”
Mahon continues, “The best-positioned companies will be those with useful, proprietary data to build fine-tuned models on top of the base foundation models. And the best-positioned workers will be those with expertise in a subject who know how to ask the right questions.”